


(this pull is) astronomical

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Post-Episode: s01e06 FZZT, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 11:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: There’s a trail of stars tattooed over Simmons’ right hip.





	(this pull is) astronomical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphireBlueJiyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBlueJiyuu/gifts).



> This is a (shamefully belated) birthday gift for the lovely Jan SapphireBlueJiyuu!! I hope your birthday was SPECTACULAR, darling, and I'm so so sorry this is late! <3 <3 <3 <3
> 
> (This isn't really the fic I wanted to write for you. It's actually a prequel to the fic I wanted to write. Maybe I'll manage that one sometime before your next birthday......but don't hold me to it. XD)

There’s a trail of stars tattooed over Simmons’ right hip.

“Oh,” she says when Grant pauses over it. “Yes, that does tend to surprise people. I suppose I don’t seem the sort to get a tattoo.”

Her tone’s hard to read, but not impossible—a challenge, laced through with a bit of pain. He weighs the odds automatically, adding the tone to her sudden tension and her tiny frown, and lands on the likelihood that this is an old hurt. The tattoo means something to her, something important, and somebody—Fitz? One of her parents? An old boyfriend?—left an emotional scar when they reacted the wrong way.

If the way she’s watching him is any indication, she’s expecting him to do the same.

Easy enough to puzzle out, but he’s glad of the distraction. The work of reading her gives him time to get himself under control, pack away his own reaction and hide his sudden realization behind the same smiling mask he’s been wearing with her all along.

“They’re cute,” he says, because they are, and takes his time kissing each one.

She’s writhing by the time he’s done, all thoughts of conversation forgotten, and he lets himself get swept up in her—in her softness and sweetness and the wicked grin that paints her face when she teases him.

Yeah. He gets swept up. But he doesn’t forget.

 

+++

 

Later, with sweat cooling on his skin and Simmons half-dozing on his chest, he has time to think about it. To trace the path the stars take over the curve of her hip and really, really _look_ at them. To let himself believe what they might mean.

Whenever a person’s skin is marked, an echo of it appears on their soulmate. It’s temporary and painless, but it happens—to everyone. Depending on the nature of the mark, echoes can last anywhere from a fraction of a second (like stray bits of ink on his hands, appearing and fading out just as fast in an endless cycle as his soulmate, apparently, went crazy with a pen) to multiple years (like a surgical scar he wore on his back the whole time he was in the woods, sometimes breaking into empty cabins just to get a glimpse at a mirror and make sure it was still there).

However long or short the echo may be, the point is that it happens no matter what. Tattoos are no exception.

And Grant remembers these stars.

He was twenty-two when he got them, on an op with John in Kiev. It was the middle of the night and he’d just gotten out of the shower when the first one appeared, and even though he’d just been dying to fall into bed—even though there was a very good chance people would be shooting at him before breakfast—he stayed up for hours, watching stars— _these_ stars—etch themselves along his skin.

The day they faded still ranks up there as one of the worst of his life.

It’s possible he’s fooling himself, just getting his hopes up after thirty years of waiting, but he doesn’t think so. The shape of the curve, the number of stars, the pattern—they’re all _right_.

Well. There’s one way to be sure.

He’s too far from the nightstand to reach it, even if he stretches, so he gently eases Jemma off of him and shifts over to sit on the edge of the bed. She makes an unhappy noise; the bedsprings creak as she sits up behind him.

“Are you running out on me?” she asks archly.

“Not at all,” he says, and smiles as he finds the pen he was hoping for in the nightstand’s single drawer. “I just wanna try a little experiment.”

“An experiment?” He can hear her moving closer, making the mattress dip as she crawls over, and then her arms are wrapping across his collarbone as she drapes herself over his back. “You do remember that’s _my_ job?”

“Yeah, but you had the action heroics covered today,” he reminds her, and it’s a fight to keep his tone light and teasing. She came so close to dying—from the virus or the fall or his own fucking orders—before he even knew she was his.

He could’ve spent his whole life waiting, never knowing he’d already lost her.

“Noooo,” she says, slowly and thoughtfully, “that was still you.” She kisses his jaw softly, and it helps a bit, warms a few of the places that have gone cold with realization. “You saved me, remember?”

If he were still trying to play her, he’d follow that line of conversation. Hell, he _did_ just a few hours ago—called her brave and mocked himself, all the better to push her mild attraction towards him into real infatuation. He thought he could get her crushing on him, have her longing from afar and thinking that much more favorably of him.

He wasn’t expecting to be pulled into her hotel room after her, let alone find out she might be his soulmate.

As it is, the possibility exists, and now he needs to know, one way or the other. So he doesn’t remind her that she saved herself. He doesn’t say anything at all.

He just uncaps the pen, pulls her right hand into their view, and draws a thin black line along the back of it.

The rush he gets at watching the echo bloom along the back of his own hand in real time is the best thing he’s ever felt—although the way Jemma’s left arm (still wrapped around his front) tightens as she gasps is a _very_ close second.

“Oh,” she breathes.

The echo’s already gone—it started fading before he even finished drawing the line—but that’s okay. He knows it was there.

And so does Jemma.

“We’re soulmates,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees. His voice is a lot thicker than he expected, but hell, he doesn’t care. “We are.”

Her arms slip away as she sits back heavily, and that…that doesn’t seem good. He’s gotta turn to see the look on her face, figure out how she’s taking it. If she’s unhappy—

But she’s not. Relief threatens to overwhelm him when he realizes that _overwhelmed_ is exactly what she’s feeling. Which is fair: it’s been a long fucking day.

( _Two_ days, really; nobody got much sleep in the rush to set up that firehouse as a quarantine zone.)

“So,” she says, a little faintly. “About the conversation we had before the sex…”

He smiles. He can’t help it. “You mean the one where we agreed that this was just gonna be a one-time, totally casual thing?”

“Yes,” she says, a smile of her own lighting her face. “We…may need to revisit that.”

“Yeah.” It comes out on a laugh, which he also can’t help. It’s just—she was in such a hurry to promise him that it wouldn’t mean anything, that she just needed some “assistance with handling the excess adrenaline from today’s excitement”—and now… “We just might.”

Her smile grows, and Grant just—he’s gotta kiss her. He _needs_ to. Jemma laughs into it, a gleeful, delighted thing, and then one thing leads to another and he’s rolling her under him again, kissing his way down her neck, leaving a nice trail of bruises that’ll mark his skin, too, if only for a few seconds.

He’s found his soulmate. Finally.

 

+++

 

“I wondered if you might be a specialist,” she says after, voice heavy with satisfaction and sleep both. She’s just barely hanging on; if she’s not out within the next ten minutes, he’ll be shocked. “You’ve lived quite an exciting life, haven’t you?”

That’s one word for it. “I have.”

“I’m glad I’m SH—SHIELD,” she continues around a yawn. “I can’t imagine what I’d have thought if I didn’t have that frame of reference.”

Nothing good, probably. He knows he’s left his mark on her plenty of times—gunshot and stab wounds, countless bruises and scrapes, the burn on his arm from that time a fire spread faster than he expected—and even an idiot would wonder about the kind of soulmate who got injuries like that on a regular basis. A genius like Jemma could’ve come up with no end of terrible theories.

“It’s a risk,” he acknowledges wryly, running his fingers through her hair. Not for any particular reason; just because he can. “They warned us about it before we signed up. Had a whole lecture on it—‘your soulmate’s gonna know you’re involved in some craaaazy shit. Might lead to some _quest_ ions.’”

She giggles at his impersonation of Agent Osman’s southern drawl.

“What would you have told me?” she asks sleepily, snuggling a little closer. “If I hadn’t been SHIELD?”

“That I was in the Army.”

Jemma blinks at the ready response.

“There’s a whole Comms department dedicated to maintaining military covers for agents with civilian soulmates,” he explains. “I’ve been documenting my scars with them for years—they make sure the service jacket will account for every cut. Guess I can stop that now.”

“Yes,” she says with a happy little sigh. “You can.”

With that, she falls silent, and for a second Grant thinks she’s fallen asleep. He’s close to joining her (the last two days weren’t as long for him as they were for her, but they still weren’t _easy_ ) when she speaks again.

“I hope you didn’t mind,” she mumbles—awake then, but just barely. “The stars.”

“I didn’t,” he promises.

“Everyone said you’d hate them,” she goes on. He’s not sure she even heard him. “That the sort of person who gets _that_ many black eyes wouldn’t appreciate carrying around a tattoo of pretty stars.”

“I loved them,” he says firmly—firmly enough that it rouses her a little, and she lifts her head to look at him.

“Really?” she asks.

“Really,” he says, and waits until she relaxes against him again to continue, “I was on an op when you got them. A bad one.” He traces the shape of the tattoo, the gentle sweep over and down her hip. “Seeing those stars every day—they gave me something to smile about.”

It’s more honest than he’d usually be—more honest than his _cover_ would usually be—but like hell is he gonna let her go on thinking he might’ve been _annoyed_ by the tattoo.

And hey, he’s gonna need to ease into being more himself with her anyway. (He is _not_ spending his life with his soulmate as his _cover_.) Why not with a show of vulnerability over something that means so much to both of them?

“I liked thinking about you,” he says—quietly, because her breathing’s evening out again. He strokes a slow path up and down her spine, hoping to chase away the last of her tension. “Imagining you were safe and happy…living a nice, peaceful life where you could just go out and get a tattoo on a random Tuesday.”

Jemma hums her agreement.

“It was a nice thought,” he finishes softly. “It kept me alive.”

She doesn’t react—she’s out. For real, this time. Good.

There’s a whole list of things he needs to do. He needs to contact John, let him know the situation’s changed (if the team’s gonna keep running into Centipede, John needs to know that Grant’s soulmate is in play; Jemma might get hurt otherwise). They’re gonna have to report this to Coulson, too, so they can be registered with SHIELD. HQ’ll try to kick one of them (probably Grant, since Fitz would leave with Jemma and it’s easier to replace one specialist than two scientists) off the team—he’s gonna need to get out ahead of that.

But all of that can wait. For now…

For now, his soulmate is sleeping, curled up against him—trusting and warm and _alive_. He came so close to losing her before he even had her, but she’s fine. She’s fine and she’s here, finally, after all this time.

There’s a lot he _needs_ to do, but only one thing he _wants_ to do.

He tugs Jemma that much closer, curls himself around her, and follows her into sleep.


End file.
